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• John G. Carney, MEd, President and CEO
• Linda Doolin Ward, Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer
• Richard Payne, MD, John B. Francis Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics
• Tarris Rosell, DMin, PhD, Rosemary Flanigan Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics
• Myra Christopher, Kathleen M. Foley Chair for Pain and Palliative Care
• Nancy Beltramo, Executive Assistant
• Melbra A. Lewis, Office Manager/Receptionist
• Cindy Leyland, Director of Program Operations
• Sandra Silva, Program Associate/Interim Director, Graduate Studies
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John G. Carney
MEd, President and CEO
jcarney@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1353
 John G. Carney, MEd, was appointed President and CEO of the Center for Practical Bioethics in December 2011. John’s policy and advocacy work has entailed testifying in state capitals, co-authoring a report to Congress, and working with the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health on improving end of life care for all Americans.
Two decades of hospice, palliative care and healthcare management experience prepared John for his first leadership role at the Center as vice president of Aging and End of Life from 2004 through 2010. His executive leadership positions include professional and volunteer organizations at the local provider, state and national association levels. His passionate voice advocating for families facing difficult healthcare decisions has been heard in rural Kansas town halls to national forums from coast to coast.
Following a brief appointment in 2011 as executive director of Crossroads Hospice to launch its Kansas presence, John returned to serve as the Center’s second president. He holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy from Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, and masters in counseling from Wichita State University.
Prior to his return to the Midwest in 2004, John spent time in the nation’s capital in leadership positions with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and America’s Health Insurance Plans.
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Linda Doolin Ward
Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer
lward@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1362
 Linda Doolin Ward’s career includes teaching, operations, marketing, communications, training and development, strategic planning and investor relations in both for profit and not for profit sectors.
In 2001, she joined Health Midwest, the largest healthcare system in the Kansas City region. She served as executive vice president-corporate relations and was part of the team that led Health Midwest through the sale to HCA, the nation’s leading investor-owned hospital company.
The sale was said to be the largest transaction of its kind in U.S. history and created the GKC Healthcare Foundation and REACH Foundation.
Linda joined the staff of the Center for Practical Bioethics after serving on the board. She is now Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. The Center is a freestanding bioethics center dedicated to raising and responding to ethical issues in health and health care. She has responsibility for finance/audit, planning, governance, resource development including endowment and planned giving as well as operations and program funding, membership, human resources, and has worked with area benefits leaders to develop a corporate program offering employees education in advance care planning as well as coaching and advocacy when dealing with advanced illness.
She serves on the board of MetroCare/NorthlandCare, a program incubated at the Center which provides specialty care for people without access to care. She is also a member of the GKC Chamber of Commerce Healthcare Council and KU Med Center’s Institute for Neurological Disorders Advisory Council.
She has participated as retreat facilitator with the Frontiers Leadership Team, a regional consortium managing a $20 million dollar CTSA – Clinical and Translational Science Award.
She serves on the board for the United Way of Greater Kansas City and chairs their Health Impact Council. She was the first woman to serve as chairman of the board of trustees of Westminster College and was honored by them with an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 2004. After 23 years on that board, she was named a life trustee in 2009. She is a director of Lawson Bank.
Linda is an active participant in the Women’s Public Service Network, and recently co-founded the Northland Giving Circle. She is immediate past chair of the Port Authority of Kansas City, Missouri, which focuses on development of the Riverfront and the former Richards-Gebaur air base. She served on the founding board of the Northland Community Foundation and continued on that board for 21 years, four years as chair. The fund has grown from nothing but an idea at its founding in 1987 to assets of nearly $50 million.
She is also past chair of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City, the Missouri Children’s Trust Fund, The Harvest Ball and the Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City. She is past vice-chair of the Partnership for Children and Crittenden.
Linda has been honored by the communities she has served including being named a Churchill Fellow of Westminster College and Central Exchange Woman of the Year. She is the recipient of the Gillis ‘Spirit of Kansas City’ Award, the Ann Robb Townsend Award for Business Leadership, and Kansas City Tomorrow’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and in 2007 was honored with the Look North Award from the Clay County Economic Development Council. In 2009, she received the prestigious Pinnacle Award from the Northland Community Foundation.
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Richard Payne,
MD, John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics
 Richard Payne, MD, is the John B. Francis Chair in Bioethics at the Center for Practical Bioethics in Kansas City, Missouri and the Esther Colliflower Professor of Medicine and Divinity at Duke Divinity School, Duke University. He holds a joint appointment in the Divinity and Medical Schools at Duke University. At the Duke Medical Center he is as a Faculty Associate of the Trent Center in Bioethics, and a member of the Duke Cancer Center. Dr. Payne is also Faculty Lead for the Collaborative on Healthcare for Aging Populations and Advanced Illnesses (CHAPI), a program in the Duke Fuqua School of Business. At the Duke Divinity School, Dr. Payne was Director of the Duke Institute for Care at the End of Life (2004-2012), and is currently a member of the Ministry Division and Program in Medicine, Theology and Culture. He teaches courses in pastoral care at the end-of-life.
Dr. Payne received his B.A in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, 1973 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, 1977. He completed his post-graduate training in medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston (1979); in neurology at the Cornell Campus of the New York Presbyterian Hospital (1982); and fellowship training in pharmacology, neuro-oncology and pain medicine at Weill Cornell Medical School and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City (1984). He was a fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Minority Medical Faculty Development Program (now called The Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program, 1981-1984). He is board certified in neurology with added qualifications in pain management and palliative medicine.
Prior to his appointment at Duke, he served as Chief, Pain and Symptom Management Section, Dept. Neurology, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (1992-1998),Houston, TX, and from 1998-2004 led the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City where he held the Anne Burnett Tandy Chair in Neurology, and was Professor of Neurology and Pharmacology, Weill Medical College, Cornell University.
He has served as chairs of the board of directors of the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa (FHSSA), the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship as a board member of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). He has also served on numerous federal panels at the National Institutes of Health and the Institute of Medicine, and has given expert testimony to Congressional Committees and the President’s Cancer Panel in the areas of health disparities, pain management and palliative care. From 2003-2004, he served as President of the American Pain Society.
Dr. Payne currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Hastings Bioethics Center, where he also chairs a selection committee for the Hastings Center-Cunniff-Dixon Foundation Physician Excellence Awards in End-of-Life Care. He also serves on medical advisory boards for QRx Pharma and Prolong Pharmaceuticals (board chair), and is a consultant for Vitas Innovative Hospice Care.
Dr. Payne is an internationally known expert in neurology, oncology, pain management and palliative care, and bioethics, and has more than 275 publications in these fields. He has also edited 4 books and has given a number of endowed lectures, including the Jules Rominger Lecture (Mercy Health System, Philadelphia); Florence M. Lockhart Nimick Lectur, Univ. Pittsburgh Medical Center; Humphrey Oei Distinguished Lecture at the Lien Palliative Care Center-National Cancer Institute in Singapore; Josephina Magno Lecture at Capital Hospice; and Rosemary Flanagan Lecture at the the Center for Practical Bioethics. Among his many awards are the Distinguished Service Award from the American Pain Society, the John J. Bonica Leadership Award from the Eastern Pain Association, the Humanitarian Service Award from the Urban Resources Institute, the Pioneer Award from Operation Rainbow/PUSH, the Excellence in Pain Award from Janssen Pharmaceutical, and the Vision to Action Award from the Center for Practical Bioethics (2013).
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Tarris Rosell
DMin, PhD, Rosemary Flanigan Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics
trosell@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1361
 Tarris “Terry” Rosell, DMin, PhD, serves in the Rosemary Flanigan Chair at the Center for Practical Bioethics. He teaches in the Center’s Certificate in Clinical Ethics and Health Policy program, and is also Professor of Pastoral Theology (Ethics and Ministry Praxis), at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kansas; Clinical Associate Professor (Ethics), Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center; and Adjunct Professor, Department of Bioethics, at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences.
Rosell completed a fellowship in clinical ethics at Vanderbilt University and earned the PhD there in Ethics and Society from the graduate department of religion. His first doctorate is in Pastoral Theology from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School.
From 2006-10, he served as co-director of Sabbaths of Hope, a grant-funded project with Mental Health America of the Heartland, which empowers faith leaders to address the stigma of depression and inequitable access to treatment. He recently directed another disparities initiative ultimately incorporated as MetroCARE, a referral network of volunteer healthcare providers for low income uninsured persons.
Dr. Rosell provides ethics consultation for the University of Kansas Hospital, where he co-chairs the Ethics Committee for adult patients. He is facilitator of the Schwartz Center Rounds at Saint Luke’s Cancer Institute and Hospital, Compassionate Caregiver Rounds for Saint Luke’s Home Care and Hospice, and facilitates Human Values Rounds for internal medicine residents. He serves on numerous other institutional committees and groups pertaining to medical education, research ethics, and clinical ethics, including the Clinical Ethics Consultation Affairs committee of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities.
For three years, Rosell was a consultant for Duke University’s Institute on Care at the End of Life for the St. John Health—Duke Collaboration for Palliative Care in metro Detroit. That project engaged faith communities regarding palliative and end-of-life care.
Dr. Rosell lectures widely, especially in the Greater Kansas City area and throughout the Midwest. He also gave ethics lectures in June 2009 and 2010 at institutions affiliated with Central Philippine University in Iloilo, the Philippines.
Ethics articles by Tarris Rosell are found in numerous periodicals, both print and electronic. He contributed a chapter to the 2008 Cambridge University publication, Complex Ethics Consultation: Cases that Haunt Us, and another to a 2011 publication by Johns Hopkins University Press, Controversial Bodies, on the ethics of plastinated bodies exhibition.
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Myra Christopher,
Kathleen M. Foley Chair for Pain and Palliative Care
Center for Practical Bioethics
Steering Committee Chair
The Pain Action Alliance to Implement a National Strategy (PAINS)
mchristopher@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1350
 Myra Christopher holds the Kathleen M. Foley Chair in Pain and Palliative Care at the Center for Practical Bioethics. Prior to Dec. 2011, Ms. Christopher was President and CEO of the Center for Practical Bioethics since its inception in 1985.
From 1998-2003, Christopher served as the national program officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s National Program Office for State-based Initiatives to Improve End-of Life Care which was housed at the Center.
These roles have allowed Christopher to continue her lifelong mission to improve care for seriously ill people and their families.
Because of Christopher’s involvement with the Nancy Beth Cruzan case, Senator John Danforth sought her assistance in drafting and introducing the Patient Self-Determination Act which became law in 1990. She consulted with the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations on patients’ rights and organizational ethics standards and developed Beyond Compliance, resource materials and a seminar for the Joint Commission that was presented across the country.
She served as a public outreach advisor to Bill Moyers on for his PBS documentary On Our Own Terms, worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to present the first national conference on palliative care in nursing homes, directed Community State Partnerships to Improve End-of-Life Care, an $11.25m grant award program, collaborated with the National Association of Attorneys General to establish palliative care as a consumer protection issue, edited State Initiatives to Improve End-of-Life Care, and collaborated with the RAND Institute to develop a report to congress on advance care planning in 2009.
Since the late 1990s, Christopher has expanded the scope of her work to include the under treatment of chronic pain. She speaks and writes about both pain and palliative care. She is currently the principal investigator on the Pain Action Initiative: A National Strategy (PAINS) and serves as Chair of the PAINS Steering Committee. PAINS’ mission is improve care for the more than 100 million Americans who struggle with chronic pain. From 2010-11, she served as a member of Pain Study Committee at the Institutes of Medicine focused the under-treatment of pain. The IOM report, Relieving Pain In American: A Blueprint for Transformation in Prevention, Care, Education and Research, was submitted to Congress in June, 2011. In 2012 she was appointed by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to the Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee at the National Institutes of Health. Christopher consults with the Centers for Disease Control to promote pain and palliative care as a public health issue and to provide education for directors of public health and aging services at the state level. On behalf of the Center for Practical Bioethics, she participated in founding the Coalition to Transform Advanced Illness in Washington, DC and serves on its incorporating board.
Christopher is currently on the board of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses Certification Corporation, the public member of the Coalition for Physician Accountability, a member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Bioethics (AJOB). She has served on many boards of directors and advisory boards, including the Duke Institute for Care at the End-of-Life the Federation of State Medical Boards, and the University of Kansas School of Nursing.
Christopher has received many awards for the work she has done to improve care for those suffering from advanced illness and chronic pain, including The American Academy of Pain Medicine’s Patient Advocacy Award, the American Academy of Pain Management’s “Head Heart Award, the W.F. Yates Medallion for Distinguished Service/William Jewell College, the American Academy of Critical Care Nursing’s Pioneering Spirit Award, the Marian Gray Secundy SANKOFA Award for work to improve palliative and end-of-life care for African Americans, the National Association of Attorney’s Generals President’s Award and Alumni Achievement Award from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri Kansas City and Honorary Alumnus of the Year Kansas University School of Nursing, and Nonprofit Professional of the Year from the Kansas City Council on Philanthropy. In December 2011, Christopher received an Honorary Doctorate from National University Health Sciences in Chicago.
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Sandra Silva
Director, Graduate Studies
TPOPP Program Director
ssilva@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1366
 Sandra Silva has two primary areas of focus at the Center as the Director of Graduate Studies and the Program Director for Transportable Physician Orders for Patient Preferences (TPOPP) along with her work in various aspects of advance care planning.
Graduate Studies includes the Center’s Certificate Program in Clinical Ethics and Health Policy and the Center’s Graduate Intern Program. The Certificate in Clinical Ethics and Health Policy program is designed for healthcare professionals working in a variety of settings. Sandy has been a faculty member of the Program since its inception in the content areas of aging and conflict resolution. Sandy is also responsible for the recruitment and development of interns who participate in projects at the Center as part of their graduate-level education at colleges and universities in the region.
Sandy directs Transportable Physician Orders for Patient Preferences (TPOPP) which is a bi-state initiative based on the belief that individuals have the right to make their own health care decisions. The work is founded on a paradigm originated in Oregon approximately 20 years ago (POLST: Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) which is being implemented throughout the United States.
Additionally, Sandy is active in training individuals and organizations in the use and implementation of Caring Conversation® workbook. She led the effort that produced the newest edition which emphasizes the role and responsibilities of the individual appointed by a loved one to serve as an agent under a Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare Decisions.
An active part of the non-profit community, her previous positions include being the Executive Director of the Alliance on Aging and Director of Senior Care Services at Catholic Charities, Kansas City-St. Joseph. She became interested in older adults issues through her research and writing on the issue of the spousal impoverishment provisions under the Medicare Act.
Sandy is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, earning her J.D. in 1994 and is also Harvard-trained in the areas of mediation and negotiation. She has worked with families in crisis for approximately 25 years. Prior to law school Sandy served in the US Army Military Corps assigned in both the United States and Germany.
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Nancy Beltramo
Executive Assistant
nbeltramo@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1351
Nancy Beltramo joined the Center in July of 2005 as the Executive Assistant. A native of Canon City, Colorado, Nancy moved to Kansas City in 2005 after living in Des Moines, Iowa for 25 years. Her experience in Des Moines included working for a downtown high-rise elderly housing facility, a state-wide organization of persons with disabilities, an international agricultural award, and Iowa’s largest private bank.
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 Melbra A. Lewis
Office Manager/Receptionist
mlewis@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1359
Melbra Lewis, a native of Kansas City, Kansas, joined the staff of Center for Practical Bioethics in May 2000. She brings over ten years’ experience of office management, excellent customer service, and employee relations skills to the Center, where she serves as both office manager and receptionist.
Lewis maintains the front office, oversees daily activities of employees, helps with the coordination of Center mailings and events, and answers and directs all incoming calls. Melbra continues to seek opportunities for professional and educational advancement.
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Cindy Leyland
Director of Program Operations
Cleyland@practicalbioethics.org
(816) 979-1357
 Cindy Leyland joined the Center in July 2005 as project director for the Kansas City Partnership to Advance Pediatric Palliative Care. The Center-sponsored initiative is designed to help organize, strengthen and promote access to the area’s palliative care services for children, their families and health care providers, leading Kansas City to designation as a Center of Excellence in Pediatric Palliative Care.
Before coming to the Center, Leyland spent five years at Community Action, an agency dedicated to the elimination of poverty in four northwest Missouri counties. During her tenure there, Leyland oversaw direct emergency service delivery, as well as community organizing projects specifically focused on advocacy and policy development at the local, state and federal levels.
Leyland is a graduate of Benedictine College’s Executive MBA program, with emphasis on leadership, entrepreneurship and transformational strategic planning.
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